Watch Gail as she walks us through refilling the boiler and temperature surfing on the Dream UP.

It’s a pretty cool machine, too — a brew boiler, separate steam thermoblock and dual pumps means you can brew and steam at the same time. The Tronic also features programmable buttons, so you can set the water volume for your double and single shots. If you are a shot or Americano drinker only, you can turn off the thermoblock steam system, too, so you’re not wasting energy on a feature you won’t be using. A sturdy steel construction and low water cut off are nice features, as well.

The only item on our wishlist for this machine? A PID! You’re still dealing with a thermostat with a 15 – 20 degree variance on the machine’s brew boiler, so you will need to temperature surf before you pull your shots. But that’s a small price to pay for the improved performance of simultaneous steam and brew — a feature generally reserved for machines that are significantly more expensive. Sure, the thermoblock isn’t going to give you the same kind of power as a traditional heat exchange or double boiler machine that has a big, beefy steam boiler, but the machine’s price reflects that.

If you’ve been coveting this machine for awhile or are new to the market and looking for a good deal, this machine’s price has been knocked down by a couple hundred bucks through August 31st. Duo Tronics purchased between 7/28/10 and 8/31/10 are now just $999! This is a great price for this kind of functionality.

So, as with all things, take a moment to assess your budget and your needs: Yes, the higher end machines will perform better shot/steam wise than this machine, but they are also twice the price. You can get great results with the Duo Tronic, it just takes a little more skill, participation and, perhaps, a little booty shakin’ on your part, that’s all.

When we did our review recently, we noticed that even though the new UP has a three-way solenoid valve, it didn’t seem to perform that well, leaving really soupy grounds behind. So we decided to experiment with the machine by installing the Brew Head Upgrade kit to see if that improved the performance. It did!

Watch Gail show us the different screens, talk about how they perform and demonstrate a shot. We even spliced in footage from the original review (accompanied by super sessy muzak!) for easy side-by-side comparison.

Gail talks to us about the features, demonstrates the different wand tips and makes us a latte — with absolutely no latte art to speak of.

We have noticed that the steaming function is not as strong as you find on machines that have a steam boiler to back it up, and also that the Duos do not have a PID on the brew boiler, so you still have to temperature surf to be certain of where your temperature is at in the heating cycle. Watch Gail show us the internals of a Duo, temperature surf and pull a couple of comparison shots.

Our partner in this venture is Uesugi USA, a Japanese company that (as luck would have it) have a US presence here in the Seattle-area. We pulled Henry into the mix and headed out to their facility to talk about what they do and see how they take these machines apart, break them down to their components and funnel them back into the commodity supply chain as cleanly as possible.

You do backflush if you own a machine with a valve system referred to as a three-way solenoid, brew pressure release, three-way valve, solenoid valve or any other combination of these phrases. Not sure if your machine has this? If your machine has an E61 brew group (such as those on Rockets, Quick Mills, Izzos or Grimacs), it has this valve system. Other models that feature this without the E61 are those made by La Spaziale, Pasquini, the Rancilio Silvia and Ascaso’s Uno Pro and Duo series. This valve system relieves pressure post-brew, which results in a drier puck, but it sucks a little bit of coffee and water into the system each time which can build up in there and adversely impact the machine’s performance. Backflushing forces detergent and water through the valve system, thoroughly cleaning it and maintaining the system. It also has the added benefit of cleaning up behind the brew head’s screen without taking it apart.

You don’t backflush if your machine doesn’t have this system — because you don’t have the valves to clean! Some machines that don’t need backflushing include the Saeco Aroma, Via Venezia, Sirena, models made by Breville, those from Francis Francis!/illy and Delonghi and Capresso semi-automatics. But since you’re not forcing detergent through the brew head, you will need to take it apart semi-regularly to clean up behind the brew screen.

The best way to determine if you need to backflush your machine is to read the manufacturer’s manual and the machine’s technical specifications to see if it has the valve system. If it doesn’t, you’re good to go; if it does, you should backflush once every 1 – 2 weeks, depending on how often you use the machine.

Not sure how to do it? Watch us backflush the Rocket Giotto E61 or the Rancilio Silvia.

The technique involves infusing the right amount of air and steam at the right pace to ‘stretch’ the milk, ultimately resulting in that wet paint texture that can be used in latte art, if you’ve got the skillz. You rest the tip of the steam wand on the surface of the milk and ‘ride’ it as the milk is slowly expanding with tiny air bubbles and coming up to temperature via the machine’s steam. You’ve got to keep a steady roll going, the bubbles to a minimum and eventually you’ll submerge the wand completely once you’ve achieved the amount of foam you want and need to simply bring it up to temperature.

Achieving good results is part skill and part equipment: Sustained dry steam that is served up from the boilers of large commercial espresso machines make the creation of microfoam a little bit easier. Also, the milk’s consistency (how much fat it has), age and temperature definitely play a part — you always want your milk to be cooled in the refrigerator until right before steaming in a pre-chilled pitcher.

So, yeah, there are a lot of elements — part art, part science — to keep in check when attempting to produce that lovely shaving-cream like texture. Understandably, many people that don’t want to make a career out of their espresso creation just don’t want to put in the time to learn how to do this.

In answer to their frustrations, several manufacturers over the years started to release adapters on their steam wands — called panarellos, auto-frothers, froth enhancement systems, the great fluff n’ stuff (okay, maybe not that one, but it could be) or any variation thereof — designed to simultaneously infuse a small amount of air with the steam so you don’t have to do a thing. Some of them do it better than others, and you end up with everything from super spongy meringue-like foam to nearly microfoam quality, depending on how the manufacturer designed the adapter. And even if you’re getting big bubbles and not the silky, dense foam you’re looking for, with a little bit of work (scraping off the top layer, spinning the milk around in the pitcher and tamping it from the bottom to burst larger bubbles, etc.), you can often get a suitable consistency.

You most often see panarellos and their like on the lower end machines that don’t have a lot of steaming power available (smaller boilers) so try to maximize the frothing potential by infusing more air into the milk. This can be good or bad, depending on what you’re trying to achieve, and occasionally you can adapt the wand to function more like a standard steam wand if you find the panarello action is not working for you.

People seem to either really love or really hate panarellos and we’re mixed about them; we have seen good and bad versions and so we don’t just dismiss them out of hand. In fact, more high tech versions are often deployed on high end commercial machines to facilitate efficient and consistent foam. So it’s not that systems that infuse air and steam without the operator’s assistance are essentially bad, but — like with most things to do with espresso machines — you get what you pay for.

Most importantly, know what you’re getting into. The majority of semi-automatic machines under $500 have these adapters on them, and nearly all superautomatics employ some form of this technology. So if you’d like to pick up a machine in one of these classes, you’ll need to either learn to love or learn to work around it.

1. To ineffectively swat at flies, yet one day you accidentally killed one and couldn’t bear to keep the gut-stained book around.
2. To prop up the uneven handmade bookshelf lovingly made by a friend/parent/spouse/sibling/child that never sits right on the wood floor.
3. To start a fire in the fireplace to enjoy while sipping on a delicious glass of chai spiced wine. (Guilty!)

Or, maybe you just recycled it by accident. Whatever the case, the fact of the matter is that now you have no wisdom to guide you. We created our manufacturer manual repository over at Brown Bean to connect you with the source code. We have manuals for a lot of models both current and historical, so if you’re looking for tips on how to perform maintenance or need to find out what that error code means, check ‘em out.

Don’t see your model there? Leave a comment here and we’ll see if we can’t track it down and add it to the repository.